ok i sort of understand that, but the divs are not in any order like that i think?

ok what i am after is three divs side by side all the same height, no matter what the divs content. be it that div one has 4 lines of text, div 2 have 8 lines of text and div 3 has 12 lines of text. all of them will be the same height and have different coloured backgrounds.

Simple.You used 100% height on the div before footer, which are under same parent div.To be more specific, left/right/center divs already had height of 100% (full browser web page view height) and then you added foote, which increased whole document height over 100%.

Jason_C wrote:margin: 0em auto; and margin: 0em;

these don't affect top and bottom, so they're fine

1st version with 100% height in html tag looked just what you want with Chrome. Same with 2nd sample without any changes Sorry, I'm to lazy to install other browsers on this computer for more testing